Kanō Eitoku

Kanō Eitoku, (born Feb. 16, 1543, Kyōto, Japan—died Oct. 12, 1590, Kyōto), fifth-generation scion of the famous Kanō family of Japanese artists who created the style of the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1574–1600) screen paintings.

The grandson of Kanō Motonobu, who had established the aesthetic canons of the Kanō school, Eitoku made the Kanō style yet more monumental and gorgeous by introducing a gold-leaf ground, upon which he applied brighter colours and heavier black-ink outlines. For his simplified designs he favoured large-scale motifs taken from nature—birds, animals, trees, flowers, rocks—which he executed on large folding screens (byōbu) and sliding panels (fusuma) used to decorate the interiors of castles and temples. As the leading artist of the Azuchi-Momoyama period, he was commissioned to paint for the military rulers Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He influenced many artists of his day, including his sons Mitsunobu and Takanobu and his son-in-law Sanraku, an outstanding artist of the period. Among the few original Eitoku paintings extant are “Chinese Lions,” on a six-paneled folding screen in the Imperial Household Collection; “Landscapes and Flowers,” on 16 sliding panels in the Tenkyū-in, Kyōto; and “24 Paragons of Filial Piety and of Hermits,” on the walls of the Nanzen Temple, Kyōto.

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